Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Physicians Are "Science Professionals"

Who knew? I suppose we shouldn't be surprised if they think an M.D. degree makes you a "science professional." After all, these are some of the same people who think the Earth is only 10,000 years old.

10 comments:

Bah, doctors are science professionals like engineers are -- practitioners of a craft which depends on the results of empirical science, which is (on good days) informed and advanced by the best of that science, but not necessarily "scientists" (though some of the more research-heavy individuals in both fields may cross over that line).

As I pointed out here a long time ago, the DI blatantly lied about the poll results they cite. The overwhelming majority of doctors surveyed favored evolution and called ID a "religiously inspired pseudo-science". The DI turns this into favorable news only by playing switcheroo with the survey questions.

As for the whole "growing number" thing, that seems to be another one of their fantasies. The Finklestein survey was a one-time poll and so obviously can't support the notion that pro-ID doctors are either growing or shrinking. The only evidence they have for this claim then is that their "list of dissenters" has grown from pathetically small to pathetically small. 260 doctors out of 15 countries? I dare say, given the huge number of doctors that 15 countries will hold, you could get a better response for homeopathy, exorcism, or faith healing.

"Tech support for the human body", in a nutshell. It's an applied science field along the lines of engineering. Unless you're a research doctor, science is not what you live.

Not to say that it's not hard work, but it relies a lot more on experience and in some cases manual skill than scientific mojo. Each patient fails to be a proper experiment, because patients seldom come with controls, unless you're lucky enough to get a lot of twins business. Specialists in certain syndromes are likely the most science-exposed, since they're not only looking for the latest research, but have patients with something in common.

It has to be said that there's also a significant luck factor involved, and people sometimes get a bit odd when it comes to things they have no control over (witness baseball players)

There's also the doctor-patient relationship. Whereas I might actually be really thankful for a doctor who could admit to not knowing, I imagine a great majority of people like them to be "sure". I don't know how the guesses-as-fact affects people in the long term, but it might make them more inclined to surety when there is no such thing.

Exposure to the science on their way to becoming physicians certainly helps as an inoculant, as a great many non-kooky doctors can attest to. It's no polio vaccine, though :)

It's worth bearing in mind that medical schools have, for the past several years, been pushing hard to rouse more applicants to their MD/PhD programs - and as difficult as they are to survive, they're now one of the easiest ways to get into medical school (perhaps I should say "easier").

Also, it's pretty much a standard rule that the -best- physicians in the field are those that carry out research. You can literally tag a physician's eminence in the field by his publication record.

So, while not all doctors are scientists, one ought to at least bear in mind that the BEST doctors are.

I work with clinician-scientists every day of my career (I'm a biomedical scientist, Ph.D. and all).

There is no question that some physicians are excellent scientists (doing both basic and clinical science). A well-conducted randomized trial is as much a science experiment as a well-conducted manipulation of HeLa cells.

But my family physician is not a scientist. She has not trained in the scientific method. Granted, there science was involved in the development of the medicine she practices, but she herself is not a scientist.

Declaring an M.D. a scientist simply because of the degree has long been one of my pet peeves.

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Principles of Biochemistry 5th edition

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

Superstition

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerlyseemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.